


Trade Bait

by candle_beck



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-18
Updated: 2011-08-18
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:32:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candle_beck/pseuds/candle_beck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every year, Billy Beane needs something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Trade Bait

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 2004.

Trade Bait  
By Candle Beck

 

Stupid fucking Barry Zito.

Billy Beane needs another bat in the outfield. He needs a lefty in the ‘pen (excuse me, a *reliable* motherfucking lefty in the ‘pen) and maybe a second baseman who didn’t spend nine years in the minors, though Scutaro’s not looking like he belongs at Triple-A Norfolk anymore, but it’s a long summer for a journeyman to be starting every day.

Every year, he needs something.

What he doesn’t need, what he most emphatically and triple-scored *does not need*, is a cocksucking one-time ace starter with a fucking mental block.

He doesn’t need the bad luck that’s stuck to Zito like his shadow, the way he’ll go out there and throw a four-hitter with two earned runs and still get tagged for the loss. He doesn’t need Zito’s month-long winless streak or his inability to get past the fifth. He doesn’t need Zito’s frustration or bird-dark eyes, he doesn’t need the sarcastic drag that’s crept into Zito’s voice or the tight anger in his every movement, he doesn’t need Zito’s fear or Zito’s despair or the way it’s begun to affect the rest of the team.

He doesn’t need to see that proof-of-God curveball hung up over the plate like a fucking Christmas stocking.

Billy Beane does not need Barry Zito, not anymore.

He’s having trouble figuring out why he doesn’t just trade the motherfucker already.

Beane comes down from his office after Zito gets pulled after going three and a third and allows five runs. He’s in the tunnel when Zito slams through the door and wings his glove hard into the concrete wall. Zito snarls, “Fuck fuck fucker motherfucker,” and braces his hands on the stone, his head down and breathing slow.

“Hey!” Beane calls shortly, striding over to his pitcher. Zito snaps his eyes up, his mouth sneered.

He raises a hand, replying sharply, “I know, Billy, okay? I fucking know.”

Shaking his head, Beane plants a hand on the wall and leans in. “You don’t know shit, motherfucker. You haven’t got the slightest fucking clue.”

Zito roughs out a breath, black shadows under his eyes, a dented line hooked in his hair from his cap, spiking up in the front and powdered with dust. “I don’t need you to tell me when I’m pitching bad, all right?” he bites off carefully.

“Well, you need someone to tell you, because fuck if you’re doing anything about it,” Beane snaps.

“I’m doing *everything*!” Zito cries, his voice echoing and hoarse. Something shudders through him, and he steadies for a long moment before continuing softly, “Everything I can think of, I’m doing it. I swear to God. I can’t . . . I can’t shake it and I don’t know why.”

Billy’s so angry, he’s so fucking sick of this. Getting beat like this, getting beat and no reason behind it, no reason . . .

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Zito,” Beane growls. “This is all in your head. You know you’re better than this. Everybody knows you’re fucking better than this.”

Zito’s strung tight, his eyes screwed shut and then he suddenly rares back and punches the wall, hard. He gasps in pain and staggers backwards, cradling his hand to his chest.

Beane clamps his hands on Zito’s upper arms, Zito tense and flinching. Beane’s rough, snarling. “Dumb son of a bitch, quit acting like a fucking rookie! Are you *trying* to fuck yourself up now? Is that what this is, you stupid piece of shit?”

Zito tears away, the soon-darkened red spots already rising on his knuckles. “It was my right hand, what do you fucking care?” his voice breaking.

Beane shoves Zito’s chest, bumping him into the wall. They say he’s got an anger management problem, and they’re not wrong. “Listen to me. You fucking listen to me, Zito.”

Zito’s face is stubbornly warped and his eyes are down, far away. Beane pushes him again, keeps his hand on Zito’s chest, and he can feel Zito breathing fast. “You think I don’t know what this is like?” Beane says and he lets his voice drop, get raspy and deep. Zito won’t look at him.

“You think I don’t know? When you go out there and you can’t see right, you can’t breathe? Everybody tells you you’re gonna be so good and you’ve always been so good and then one day you just *aren’t*.”

Zito sneers like a teenager. “Yeah, all that compassion, is that why you’re about to get rid of me? You’re gonna send me somewhere else because you know me so well, Billy, is that it?”

Billy closes his hand in Zito’s jersey, digging his knuckles into Zito’s chest. “You’re dumb, but you’re not dumb enough to believe everything you hear from the fucking press, motherfucker.”

Zito catches his hand around Beane’s wrist but doesn’t throw him off, just glares and says back, “The press aren’t the only ones saying it, skip.”

Zito’s that kid you saw walking home at dawn across the college quad with no shoes and socks that don’t match. Zito’s everybody’s best friend and he makes up his own prayers and somewhere he’s still twenty-one years old and driving across the desert, crying so hard he couldn’t see anything.

Zito’s got fucking *everything*, and he doesn’t even know it.

“I’m not gonna let you do this,” Beane says, Zito’s heart racing. “You wanna end up like I did, you just keep thinking about how bad you’re doing and get too scared to fix it and then see what fucking happens, kid, just wait and see.”

Zito’s upper lip pulls up, and yeah, bad fucking move, lefty, because Zito’s spitting out thoughtlessly, “I’ll never be like you, Billy, you’re not even a has-been, you’re a never-fucking-were.”

And Beane hits him, there in the ballpark tunnel, hauls off and just fucking decks him, Zito’s head cracking back against the stone and his eyes rolling up white, his body sagging briefly.

Billy holds him up.

Zito lets his weight rest heavily, tilted forward against the other man, his mouth pressed to Beane’s shoulder for a long time until he pulls back, eyes glazed, and says incredulously, “You hit me.”

He lifts his hand, touches the corner of his mouth, staring down at his fingers. “I’m bleeding,” he notes in amazement.

Beane with his hands curled in Zito’s jersey, slipping up and down, laughs slightly, his anger sinking out of him and did he really just hit his number three starter? “Are you just gonna keep pointing out the obvious, or are we gonna talk?”

Zito feints a grin, blood on his teeth. “I dunno, I might be kinda scared of you now.”

Beane forces his hand loose, pats the pitcher carefully. “Like you weren’t before.”

“Yeah.”

They’re quiet, Zito’s tongue poking at the inside of his lip, tasting copper and feeling the swell. Beane doesn’t take his hands off him, though he’s not really mad anymore, strangely, and Zito doesn’t need the support anymore.

And then Zito’s hands suddenly crawl up his sides, moving anxiously and scratching at Beane’s shirt. Zito lifts his head and his eyes are black, solid fucking black, and he whispers, “Don’t trade me, Billy.”

Beane slides his hand to the back of Zito’s neck. Zito clings to him, tipping his pitches and letting everybody see everything. His voice won’t for the life of him stay steady. “I don’t want to play anywhere else, Billy, I don’t think I can. So please, man, please don’t get rid of me.”

Beane shakes his head, Zito’s hair flat over his fingers. But he won’t say anything, ‘cause Billy Beane doesn’t lie, not unless there's something in it for him.

He touches his forehead to Zito’s for just a second. “Go ice your arm. Your hand too. Don’t punch anything else.”

Zito sniffs hard, lifts his head to swipe an arm across his nose. “You don’t punch anything else, either.”

Billy grins. “Okay.” He lets Zito go, being terribly careful with him. Zito keeps his grip for a long moment, and Beane finds himself saying, “You’re not gonna end up like me.”

Zito lets his palms skate down Beane, clipping his belt and then off him, and Zito smiles crookedly, the corner of his lip swollen. “’Course not. I’m not that smart.”

Zito scoops up his glove and walks down the tunnel to the clubhouse without looking back, one hand on the back of his head on the growing bump, and Beane leans on his shoulder against the wall, his hand aching from where it hit Zito’s mouth, and he’s lining up rosters in his mind, available players, which team he can screw over in a three-way trade and how much he’ll have to give up.

An outfield bat, a lefty reliever, a veteran infielder. Anybody but this cold-eyed man who has everything and can’t touch it, anybody but a ballplayer too broken to be fixed.

THE END


End file.
